Remembering Something
by sarahwuzheree
Summary: Months after the Loki incident Natasha is still concerned with how Clint is holding up, but she would never tell him that. They are given time off from their last exhausting mission together and are offered a place to stay in Stark Tower. They have their own level to themselves, but only a single bedroom. How will they manage? Not established relationship. Nothing serious...yet.


_**A/N: So I just took up this fic as an idea that came to me because my dear friend loves this ship so much that it will probably shatter the Earth. Anyway I just thought that this would be a cool way to show her that in fact I don't hate on certain ships. Hope you enjoy. Let me know if you want any changes or suggestions. (:**_

Clint woke up completely unaware of his surroundings and jolted himself out of his dream - which didn't happen often - and looked around the dark over-the-top room. He looked to his left and saw a nightstand and a little of a walk away was the open door to the bathroom, to his right there was more bed and folded up covers. He put his hand to the sheets and he felt the leaving warmth and his eyes slowly moved up. They soon met a pair of thighs and led straight up to drastic curves and he was met by her green eyes. Her red hair, a mess from sleep and from leaping quickly out of bed, she was in defensive stance.

Clint shook his head and cleared his mind of his thoughts, remembering where he was and who he was with, " 'Tasha...it's alright. Put the gun down."

He watched as she stared back at him, blinking back tears, but that wasn't like her. She slowly acknowledged that he had the situation under control and that there as no longer a threat.

"I'm sorry... You were saying things, and then when I checked on you, you opened your eyes and they were bright blue. And then you bolted off the bed...I didn't know what else to do." She apologized and slowly let the gun down. For a moment she thought he was under Loki's spell again, but she had cured him of that months ago.

" 'Tasha...you know I'm all back." He opened his arms up for her as she set the gun back in her open nightstand draw. She climbed on the bed and next to him before trusting either of them to go into his embrace.

"I just... I wasn't sure. Maybe it was just in my head?" She closed her eyes as she felt his arms wrap around her and she felt a warmth inside her at being back in his arms. "Clint...do you..." She payed a moment trying to gather the words, "do you have strong feelings towards me, but not just sexually?" She finally got out quickly and looked up at him and into his stormy eyes, unsure of her own feelings for the agent.

"What brought this on 'Tasha? Did Stark say something to you to..." He was cut off.

"No, Clint. No, just... I don't know if your feelings are genuine is all." She buries her face in his chest leaving him speechless for a moment.

He takes the opportunity to stroke her beautiful, red, short hair. He sometimes catches himself wishing she would grow it out more because of how much he loved it when they worked missions together. After a few silent minutes he kisses her hair and tilts her chin up so he can speak to her face. "Have I been unclear...am I confusing my feelings towards you? I'm sorry. 'Tasha I know you know how deeply I feel for you. Don't you remember..."

"Don't you say it!"

"Why not?"

"Just..."

"Don't you remember when we were off from our missions together? Does it bother you? I thought after everything we've been through that it was obvious..." he pauses, "Even Banner knows and he hasn't even really seen us together except during training and battles. Natasha...my feelings are genuine."

She sat there in his lap and looked at him and saw truth behind his words, not just words, but they had meaning, they had memories to back them up. He meant them. Every. Single. Word. And this scared her a little.

And after a moments silence she processed everything and hugged him, pushing them back in the bed, Clint on his back, head resting against his pillow.

In her moment of silence, Natasha went through the flashes of the first night of staying on their own level of Stark Tower.

"And this, my favorite assassin couple, is your level." Tony showed them their level in his Tower from the elevator. "Well, I ought to be off, Steve offered me a challenge of making him some indestructible punching bags for him in the training room on his level. Gotta go! You two go ahead and figure out sleeping arrangements." He winked and before they could say anything the doors shut and the elevator was going up to Tony's personal level.

Natasha held her duffle bag in her right hand and turned to face the rest of the space behind them. It was a large open plan floor with a huge living room front and center, facing the tinted glass windows. There was a kitchen in the left just past the living room and kitchen was, she assumed, a bedroom. On the immediate right, closed off from the living room was another bedroom.

She looked around and turned to Clint who was waiting for her to pick a room so he could settle in himself. She walked to the other room and found that it was not another bedroom like she had thought. More or less a make shift training room for them both, but where was she to sleep.

Clint had already managed to unpack his things and was behind her and spoke, "Shit. This isn't another room. 'Tasha, I'll take the couch, go take the room." He spoke going back to the room and starting to pack.

"No. Really it's fine, I've had worse."

"Stark must've put us in the wrong level or something..."

"No he didn't that training room is not "meant for anyone else."" She said mocking Tony, "It is specifically designed for assassin's...like ourselves."

It was dark already and they just got off a very energy consuming mission and then a debrief half the day with Fury and Coulson. They skipped lunch earlier that day and when they first arrived, via Tony's invitation, Steve hustled them into the kitchen and made them something to eat, knowing the struggles if having a difficult mission and not eating enough to keep up energy.

They decided that was good e bought like a dinner meal and adjusted to their new sleeping quarters.

Clint, unknowingly to Natasha stared at the ceiling feeling guilty about having the room. Just as be was about to get up he felt a weight sink in the bed and a soft shuffle closer to him.

" 'Tash?"

"Mmm...?"

"M'kay...come're." He turned to her and moved her closer and wrapped his arms around her lightly not wanting to intimidate her knowing she could easily kill him if she wanted. "I was gonna let you have the bed...but this is better." He sighed and closed his eyes.

She didn't say anything in response, but let him hold her and bring her closer. Soon she felt herself fall closer to sleep when he woke up again and spoke.

"Will you be here when u wake up?"

"Yes." She whispered back to him and allowed herself to dream.

"It doesn't bother me...how I feel towards you. It just...it just scared me." She thought if every night since that first and they had been the same, she would crawl in bed when she thought he was asleep and would be brought closer and promised to be there in the morning, until just before bed tonight he had done something she hadn't expected him to do.

"Come on 'Tash, let's go to bed." He said before he could stop himself. He stopped walking towards the room and looked back at her still on the couch where he left her.

She blinked at him and hesitated only a moment. She was up off the couch an next to him in a moment and then past him and in the room waiting for his still stunned body to catch up with her.

He blinked and was turning and rushing into the room and found her on his usual side of the bed curled up already and pretending like he couldn't see her. He took off his shirt and pants and climbed on the bed with her, but not before seeing that his clothes joined hers.

She lifted her head from the pillow and told him to move closer, opening up the covers for him to climb under. He caught a small quick glimpse of her red silk panties and matching bra and found himself trying to push the sudden arousal away.

He inched to the middle of the bed and lay on his back and looked up at the dark ceiling. He felt her move closer and her soft hair against his chest, she moved her head so she could listen for the beating of his heart and she hummed.

" 'Tash...you're making this very hard for me to keep a handle on...with you...like this...in...that." He gulps trying to keep his arousal down, not wanting to take advantage of her for being in such an uncharacteristically affectionate mood.

"I thought...alright...should I just get dressed? Yes...okay. I'm sorry, Clint."

"I never said I didn't like it.. I just don't want to take advantage of you and have you never forgive me again." He let her shuffle to one side of the bed and he stayed where he was.

After no response and no movement, he decided she was asleep and kissed her lightly in the lips so not to wake her and whispered his apology in her hair, and then rolled carefully on his other side and faced the other door leading to the bathroom, not the rest of the floor.

"Why..?" He asked her looking at her with soft, concerned eyes, "Why does something like you feelings for me scare you? You are the strongest woman, no, person, that I know, he'll you could probably be stronger than Hulk and Cap...but why is this your weak spot? I know what you want me to think it is, but that's not really it, you know you're hiding it from me and yourself. Russia can't hurt you anymore, not will they ever because you're stronger than whoever they could possibly send. So tell me. Why? Really, why are you afraid?"

She's speechless for a moment, unable to conjure words to describe anything from Clint's little speech. She takes a breath, and calmly explains.

"As you know...in Russia I was trained there to be merciless in my special ops missions. They sent me out whenever someone else had failed, died, or it was too dangerous for others. To them I was a machine. A killing, obeying, machine. More than a hand full of times they thought that I would not return, but each time I proved them wrong.

"I was never permitted to experience any emotion, not even pain, they had worked all of that out of me as a child. Then I had finally had enough, they violated me and demanded I express no feeling of it and soon after I escaped them. Under threat of being recaptured and being sent to a worse fate, I went to work and slowly, but surely, killed them in every way I knew they feared and when I was done I found myself like a rogue. Like the rogues they warned me of. And that's when I found myself doing awful, pointless kills, yet meaningful to those that were aware.

"That's how we met. You probably should have killed me. I was in a mad state. A new rogue, no orders to follow and coming off the high that I had been brain washed the majority of my life to be who I was...it drove me almost to the point of no return. But as I said, then...I met you.

"I had never worked with a partner on missions before you came along, but I found you easy enough to work with and adjust methods to. You kept me practically same for all these years, all those missions and you were the first type of actual contact with anyone I really had. Of course I'm going to be scared, how was I to tell if you actually reciprocated, even thought of me in that way, even looked at me that way?!" She broke off a moment to take a breath and cool off a bit, "My weak spot isn't just feelings, Clint, they are those specifically that I show towards you. I don't feel this towards other people. I would normally be like this in front of others, I wouldn't trust anyone the way I trust you."

As she finished she felt his lips meet hers roughly, and for the first, real, time.


End file.
